THE END OF THE YEAR 247 



putting up an orthodox English-looking gate I had 

 failed to insist on his return, with the result that a 

 very second-rate imitation of the Canadian barbed- 

 wire gate had been thrust into a position it was 

 powerless to hold. The cattle of my neighbour 

 Richard Ryan simply breathed on it and it fell over, 

 and they proceeded at once to the stack-yard and 

 laid siege to the hayrick. 



It is not what cattle eat in a stack-yard that 

 raises Cain in one's heart, but what they render 

 useless, and from that day through many weeks 

 of the winter a certain portion of the day was spent 

 in hounding them out. Pax was a good cattle-dog 

 and we could always get rid of them, although 

 never without the prospect of return, but the 

 loss of time and annoyance and physical exhaustion 

 attached to this daily warfare were altogether 

 trying. 



Then too I had to face the fact that I was des- 

 perately short of money. On January i I was due 

 to pay one thousand one hundred and sixty dollars 

 to my predecessor, one thousand dollars being the 

 third instalment of my five payments of one thousand 

 dollars each, plus one hundred and sixty dollars, 

 the agreed rate of interest at six per cent. The 

 blockade at the elevators was likely to last, but this 

 was more or less a relief as the bankers knew one 

 really could not sell and settle, and it would have 

 been awkward at that period to get my wheat hauled 

 fifteen miles to the elevators. The working expenses 

 that year were very heavy : the fence, the breaking, 

 the balance of one hundred and eighty-six dollars for 

 the horse Tommy, had overdrawn my balance at 

 the bank considerably, and the note came in every 



